Chapter One: Drive Me Wilder

DRIVE ME WILDER

A covert mission brings them together.
A deadly conspiracy threatens to tear them apart.
Can Wilder and Wren’s love survive the world of international espionage?

WILDER
As the rising star of MI6, I thought I had it all figured out. But when a mysterious American agent walks into my office, my world turns upside down. Wren Harlow is beautiful, brilliant, and hiding secrets that can destroy us both. As we race to uncover a deadly conspiracy reaching from London to Washington, I find myself falling for a woman I can’t trust—and can’t let go.

WREN
I’ve spent my entire career in the shadows, gathering intelligence for the NSA. My latest mission brings me face-to-face with the charming and infuriating Wilder Whittaker. As my carefully constructed cover begins to crumble, I must choose between protecting my heart and trusting the one man who could be my downfall—or my salvation.

Together, Wilder and I navigate a treacherous world of espionage, betrayal, and passion. Can our love survive the secrets between us and the dangers that threaten to tear us apart?

CHAPTER ONE

“Cor blimey,” I muttered when my secretary announced my four-thirty appointment had arrived.

I’d picked up the phrase up from Wellie, the head groundskeeper at my family’s estate in Bedfordshire, and I’d make no apology to anyone for using the cockney expression. Alcott “Wellie” Fulton was one of the finest men I knew, and anyone who judged him differently could be damned.

“Sir?”

“Right. Sorry. Um…I’ll just be another minute. Tell whomever it is to wait in the vestibule.”

“I don’t think so,” said the woman who waltzed in and sat on the edge of my desk.

“What in the bloody hell?” I muttered under my breath.

“Wren Harlow,” she said with an accent that sounded straight out of Texas, holding out her hand as though I was expected to shake it.

Instead, I leaned back in my chair and studied her.

“Well, ain’t you as pretty as a Georgia peach?” I said in my best Southern drawl.

“Wrong part of the States, Mr. Whittaker, but you said I was pretty, so I won’t criticize your accent too much.”

“Remind me why you’re here, Miss Harlow?”

I caught the eye of my secretary standing in the doorway, looking panic-stricken. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Udele? You look as though you’ve swallowed a cockroach.”

“Nothing, sir,” she answered, clearing her throat and leaving my office.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Now you’ve gone and upset poor Mrs. Udele. Shame on you, Mr. Whittaker.”

“As you can see by the pile of files on my credenza, I am a very busy man, Miss Harlow. So if you’d please cut to the chase, I’d appreciate it ever so much.”

“I’ll do so over dinner.”

I sat back in my chair in the same way I had when she first walked in. “I’m previously engaged.”

“Change your plans.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You don’t have any idea who I am or why I’m here, do you?”

I thought about looking at my desk to see if Mrs. Udele had left me a note as to why I was meeting with Miss Harlow, but the pretty Texan would likely call me out on it, so I didn’t.

“As I suspected. Well, Mr. Whittaker, I am here on behalf of the United States Department of Homeland Security.”

That’s right. Now I remembered. She was here to talk to me about Matthew Caird, currently being held at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh on several murder and terrorism charges.

While the powers that be at Secret Intelligence Service headquarters agreed that Caird was more a deranged sociopath suffering from borderline personality disorder who had it out for my family specifically, the US DHS refused to relent. The bomb he’d planted in California at the home of two former CIA operatives and current contractors for the agency, meant America wanted their pound of the man’s flesh.

Miss Harlow’s task was to extradite Caird to the States for crimes he’d committed on their soil. It was my job to convince her otherwise and to keep the wanker imprisoned here in the UK.

“I don’t know what you consider the appropriate time for dinner in your part of the world, but in the UK, we’re barely out of teatime,” I said.

“I can wait.”

I opened the calendar on my laptop. I had nothing scheduled for the rest of the day, although I had planned to meet up with a few mates for drinks later.

“Whatever your intention may be, Miss Harlow, I can assure you that a cocktail and a decent meal will hardly sway SIS in their intransigence, nor me. Caird not only killed several of our best agents, his actions specifically targeted my family. The mere planting of a bomb at a California beach house pales greatly in comparison.”

“As I anticipated, you haven’t been briefed about his other crimes.”

I sighed. As far as I was concerned, the woman’s reason for being in my office was inconsequential. SIS would never give in, no matter what Matthew had done, didn’t do, or planned in America.

However, spending an evening looking across a table at the gorgeous woman whose luscious behind was currently planted firmly on the corner of my desk might not be the worst way to kill a handful of hours.

I scribbled an address on the back of my calling card and handed it to her. “Give this to the doorman when you arrive. I’ll be waiting in the bar and will instruct him to escort you inside.”

Miss Harlow raised an eyebrow, but I caught a quick glimpse of a grin. She should be smiling quite broadly, given where I was taking her this evening. The establishment at Five Hertford Street was typically a place solely for the likes of George and Amal Clooney, Sir Paul McCartney, or a member of the British nobility—which I was.

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